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The year is 1910. In the rural German village of Vandorf, seven murders have been committed within the past five years, each victim having been petrified into a stone figure. Rather than investigate it, the local authorities dismiss the murders for fear of a local legend having come true. When a local girl becomes the latest victim and her suicided lover made the scapegoat, the father of the condemned man decides to investigate and discovers that the cause of the petrifying deaths is Magaera, the very last of the snake-haired Gorgon sisters who haunts the local castle and turns victims to stone during the full moon.

The film was adapted into a 10-page comic strip for the September 1977 issue of the magazine House of Hammer (volume 1, #12, published by Top Sellers Limited). It was drawn by Alberto Cuyas from a script by Scott Goodall.[citation needed]

Variety wrote, "Though written and directed on a leisurely note, 'The Gorgon' is a well-made, direct yarn that mainly gets its thrills through atmosphere. The period storyline is simple and predictable but John Gilling has turned out a well-rounded piece and Terence Fisher's direction is restrained enough to avoid any unintentional yocks."[2]The Monthly Film Bulletin found that the monster's appearance was "belated, vague and insufficiently spectacular. Still, it makes a change from vampires, and though the film has little genuine flair for atmosphere it is quite well acted by Richard Pasco and an appropriately blank-eyed, statuesque Barbara Shelley."[3]